


Bruises

by UnderTheBedAndInYourHead



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Confused Percy, Homophobia, Hurt Percy, Jason gives a mean pep-talk, M/M, Percy is afraid of himself, Protective Jason, Protective Percy, Reassuring Jason, Violence, angry Jason, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 14:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13976778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderTheBedAndInYourHead/pseuds/UnderTheBedAndInYourHead
Summary: Percy comes home, Jason wants to know what the hell happened to his boyfriend.





	Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!  
> So I know this isn't Hitchhiker and I'm sorry, but I just wanted a break from writing that, so I finished writing this!  
> I do hope you like it.

“What the fuck happened, Percy?”

Percy flopped onto the blue, threadbare couch, trying to avoid Jason’s horrified, questioning stare. But then there were hands on him, lifting his chin up.

“Holy, fucking, shit. Percy. What happened to you?”

“I got mugged. It’s okay, it’s no big deal.”

Jason’s face turned disgusted, but not towards him.

“What do you mean, it’s no big deal? Fuck,  _ Percy _ \- they broke your fucking nose!” Jason let go of Percy’s face and disappeared out of their living room, only to return seconds later with a tin of ambrosia squares. “Eat this.”

Percy took a square, biting in painfully and chewing slowly. Jason sat and watched him for a moment, looking extremely perplexed. He ran a hand angrily through his shockingly blonde hair, trying so hard not to yell. He made a frustrated sound. “Dammit Percy,  _ how did this happen _ ?”

Percy shrugged non committedly still chewing. His split lip was half healed and tugging every time he moved it.

“Don’t give me that shit, Percy. How many were there? I must have been more than a few, otherwise you wouldn’t look like this.” Percy  looked like he was going to cry.

Jason softened and pulled his  _ bruised and bloody as hell _ , boyfriend closer, eyeing Percy’s crooked nose. 

He sighed, taking in the damage and knowing what he had to do.

“Alright, stay still. I’m going to fix your nose.” He lifted Percy’s chin so that he would look him in the eye. He was blinking back tears. Jason looked at him softly and seriously. “It’s going to hurt.”

Percy nodded. “I know.”

Jason grabbed Percy’s nose and quickly wrenched it back into place, hearing a sharp cracking noise as he did so.

Percy yelped painfully and grabbed onto Jason’s arms, his fingers leaving white marks in their wake.

Jason pulled his boyfriend of two years into his lap, allowing himself to be straddled. Percy buried his face into Jason’s neck and started to sob. 

“Hey, hey, hey. Percy, it’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s alright. Nothing is going to hurt you.” Jason rubbed his large hands along Percy’s shaking back, kissing his raven black hair and trying to soothe him.

It was silent for a long while. Jason listened to the soft tick of the clock, the noise of the air conditioner and the hum of the refrigerator in the room over. The lights were dim, their yellow glow in the dark lit the profiles of the two boys, one holding onto the other like he was afraid he would disappear, like he would be taken away by some unseen force and the other would be helpless to stop it. It was well past four in the morning before Jason realized that Percy had fallen asleep.

There would be no answers tonight.

_________  
  


In the morning, Jason found Percy sitting on a barstool at their kitchen table, in his boxers. His tan skin was a stark contrast against the lighter fabric. A pot of coffee was brewing, making burbling sounds and filling the whole apartment with its strong, tangy smell. Jason could see the aftermath of last night's half- healed bruises. The ambrosia couldn’t fix everything overnight and left Percy mottled with greens and yellows and lighter blues. There were more bruises than Jason had seen in the darkness of their bedroom after he had stripped him of his torn and bloody clothes. There was a large one that had bloomed all along his ribs, confirming Jason’s fear that he had either torn or broken them. The black eye from the night before was still a bit puffy and the blonde man could see that the bruise hadn’t stopped there. There was one that covered almost the entire left side of his face, scratches leaving his face tinged with red. 

His nose looked so swollen that Jason wondered if the man could even breathe through it.

Jason had seen Percy worse off than this, but he idea that it was a _ mortal _ who had done this to his Percy filled him with a heavy, mulling anger. 

Then Jason noticed that Percy was cradling his phone. Flicking his finger across the screen, giving each of the items he was looking at a long stare.

He came up behind Percy and kissed him atop his head, wrapping his arms around his beaten boyfriend. He felt Percy tense and then relax. His muscles allowing him to fall backwards and let Jason take some of his weight from him.

The blonde man peered down to get a glimpse of what Percy was looking at and was surprised when he saw that he was looking at pictures of  _ them:  _

Jason giving Percy a piggy back ride, Percy shoving cotton candy playfully in Jason’s face. Lots of smiles, embraces and fluffy stuff that made Jason overly giddy.

Percy paused on one of the pictures, and Jason noticed that it was his most recent lock screen photo.

It was a picture of the two of them, their lips pressed together, faces still wearing the remnants of a smile.

It was a soft photo - one of Jason’s favourites. He felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and then felt it fall just as fast.

Percy had been mugged and then beaten to a pulp. His phone screen hadn’t been cracked when he left the apartment last night. His lock screen showed a picture of two men kissing.

Fucking, fuck.

Percy hadn’t just been mugged. He had been fucking beaten up by a group of fucking homophobic assholes.

“You figured it out, huh?”

Percy’s voice was quiet and although he tried to direct his tone towards playful, it fell short of the mark. He must have heard Jason’s brain come to a conclusion.

“Percy, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to-.” Percy let out a sigh and tried to lean his face into his hands before hissing from the pain of touching his bruised face. “Fuck. Jason. I didn’t want you to be upset.”

“Upset? About what? About the fact that you’re gay and I’m gay and I love you and people can’t deal with the idea of equality?”

“About the fact that I almost killed a bunch of fucking mortals.”

Jason froze for about a half second.

“Jason, I had to call an ambulance. The cops showed up. I was fucking questioned, had there not have been eyewitnesses that saw that I was defending myself, I would have arrested.”

Jason was genuinely taken aback.

Percy turned his head away.“They called you a faggot. I didn’t like that.” His voice held a seething anger in it and Jason could see his hands clenching and unclenching. His knuckles turning from white to red over and over.

“Percy, it’s okay.”

“No. No it’s not. If I let people get under my skin like this all the time, if I can’t control myself...Jason.” He let out a loud, frustrated huff of air, it bordered on screaming. 

“We’re not supposed to hurt mortals. It made me sick to hurt half-bloods during the titan war. I’m supposed to kill monsters, not people.”

“Some people are monsters.” Jason heard himself say it, he felt the words on his tongue and for a second, he really believed it.

Then he saw the look on Percy’s face.

“Jason, please don’t say that. Please don’t tell me you believe that. Because if that was true, there would be no boundaries for us. I know that we’re demigods, I know that we have to protect ourselves. But I don’t want to live only for killing. I don’t want that to be my purpose. I don’t want to be a murderer.” His face screwed up and his swollen eyes started to water. “Gods, I am so scared that that’s what I am.” His voice was utterly broken and it hurt Jason’s heart. 

He pressed his hands to his face again and sobbed in earnest, his body becoming small, afraid and completely helpless.

Jason had him in his arms within seconds. 

“Shush. Percy, please. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re not a murderer. You’re not.”

Percy shook his head, smearing tears and snot into Jason’s chest. He clutched his tee shirt tighter.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Sometimes I think that I’m doing something good, that I’m helping somebody whenever I lift my sword or my fists.” He was shaking his head so furiously now that Jason was worried that he’d hurt himself.

“Sometimes I think I’m saving somebody. But, Jason, what if all I’m ever doing is saving myself? What if the only thing I ever protect is me? 

“What if everyone who has died around me, what if it was all because of me? After Beckendorf died, Annabeth called me a coward, you know. For different reasons, but still. I  _ had _ run, I  _ had  _ left Beckendorf behind, let him die. I didn’t even  _ try _ to save him. What if I am a coward?”

Percy tilted his head up and looked Jason in the eyes. He looked so wrecked and so very afraid.

“Do you think I’m selfish?”

The question didn’t quite compute for Jason.

Percy? Selfish?

That had to be one of the most ridiculous things he had ever heard.  _ Ever. _

So he told him so.

“Percy… how many times have you given something up, in order to help someone else?” 

Percy shook his head in denial.

“I’m serious. You have no idea _how_ serious I am.” Jason cupped his bruised up cheeks, brushed his thumb in a gentle back and forth under his eye. Percy’s eyes were _so_ _damn green._

“Percy, you are so sweet. So kind,  _ so goddamn heroic  _ that sometimes I get jealous. Somehow you always,  _ always  _ manage to make people love you. I have never once seen you put yourself before anyone else. You should have heard the stories the kids told me before I officially met you! You are their idol, and not just because you saved Olympus, but because all you are is kind and all you do is save people, protect, help and care about those you are protecting. Everyone knows it, everyone has seen it. We both know Beckendorf sacrificed himself, that he was fully prepared to give his life for what he believed in. Just like how you were willing to fight those homophobic douchebags for someone you care about-”

“Someone I love,” Percy corrected, quietly.

Jason smiled softly and warmly and so, so lovingly. Gods, he loved him right back.

“The point is,” Jason continued. “You fight to protect, not for revenge. You would never kill just because you can. No part of you has any blood lust in it. You are perfect and you’d never hurt someone or something without a reason to do so.”

Percy closed his eyes lightly.

“I just wish I could do more and hurt less.”

Jason let his boyfriends face go, bending down so that he could kiss the top of his head, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and nosing at his hair. “You are perfect, Percy.” Jason kissed his neck, his exposed collarbone, breathing in the scent of sweat and blood and something else that belonged to Percy completely.  “You are perfect and I love you.”

Percy sighed, relaxing into Jason, knowing, if only slightly, that Jason was usually right about things. He didn’t feel thirsty for blood, had no desire to leave their little apartment and hunt anything. He was content to sit here and let Jason love him, bloody past and all.

Jason ran his hand down Percy’s arm, gripping his wrist momentarily before interlocking their fingers. “I love you, so fucking much,” he breathed into his skin.

The black haired boy arched his back when his boyfriend nipped at just the right place, where his neck curved into his shoulder, letting out something surprised and breathy.

“Jason!” He gasped. “Not now. I’m covered in blood.”

“Then we should fix that,  _ don’t you think _ ?”

Jason squeezed at Percy’s thigh.

He couldn’t help the quiet moan.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s a good idea.”

__________

After Percy was clean again, Jason continued to stop at nothing to to make his boyfriend smile and to fill their phone camera’s with images that would make  _ any _ homophobe _ ridiculously _ pissed off. 


End file.
